My sisters are so successful. one is a doctor, the other is an engineer but I'm the black sheep. my parents hate me sometimes because I get pretty bad grades. :(.

Song Premiere: Mat Kearney - "One Black Sheep". By Dacey Orr December 22, 2014 12:00pm. Singer-songwriter Mat Kearney has a lot on the horizon, with latest album JUST KIDS set for release early next year and a hefty headlining tour, too. We caught up with Kearney about the new album and got an early listen to album track “One Black Sheep. ” Listen to the track in the player above, and get to know a little bit about the song, the album and how Kearney’s live performances have evolved below. Paste. Can you tell me a little bit about this track, “One Black Sheep,” and what inspired it.

Mat Kearney: “One Black Sheep” was one of the more auto-biographical songs that just kind of happened. On this record I just kind of kept asking the question, like ‘What kind of record would Paul Simon and Kanye West make together?’ I feel like that song kind of captured the Paul-Simon-meets-hip-hop-production type of song that we were going for. It’s definitely my story, growing up in Eugene, Oregon. It references our Volkswagen van driving around town… it’s all right there. It talks about when me and a buddy left college and said ‘Hey, let’s drive to Tennessee and see what happens’ and we jumped in the back of his Chevy truck that had no air conditioning and stopped at Fort Kearny and slept under the stars.

We headed to Nashville and what was only supposed to be a month ended up turning into this whole thing that I’m still doing now. So it’s really kind of my journey from kid to now—my modern-day “Nothing Left to Lose. ” You know, that first song I had that kind of told my story as a musician. This is kind of “Nothing left to lose” 2. 0, 2015.

Paste. So your new album, JUST KIDS.

What made you decided to choose that song as the title track. M.

: Some of the themes that we’ve been talking about. I’ve been in Nashville now for a long time—my parents have moved here, and my little brother moved here, and I think when my parents moved here some of those physical roots that tie you to your hometown felt like they were severed. On a lot of this record, I found myself exploring my hometown and upbringing and kind of the things that shape you in your past and that shape you today. It’s like a love letter to my hometown. “Just Kids” is sort of about that season of your life, where you’re middle school, cement is still wet emotionally for a lot of things that’ll be there for the rest of your life. I guess I’m thinking about those kinds of topics. Paste.

You were saying earlier that this sound is a little bit different than people might expect, particularly those familiar with your older music. Tell me about how you want people to receive it—have you played any of these songs live. M. : I haven’t, actually. I haven’t played these songs live. I played the one song, “Just Kids,” about twice… I think that I’ve always had this hip-hop influence, this spoken-word part of what I’ve done that’s maybe different from other singer-songwriters.

Even when I started doing music, I would sit with instrumentals and write these weird, auto-biographical, emotional rap songs. And then I picked up the guitar and kind of blended the two together, and I was just kind of learning how to sing.

I think that people who have really dug in and gotten into not just the singles, but my records are familiar with that side. I think that this new record is almost returning more back to my first record, where there was even more of that kind of spoken-word influence. Paste. Speaking of touring, you just announced a bunch of headlining dates (including many with opener Judah and the Lion ). How has that changed for you over the years. M.

: Yeah, I mean touring has grown for me. When I started, it was just me anda guitar and I was a writer in my mind—I was kind of learning how to perform. I didn’t come from a family of performers or musicians.

But over the years, it’s grown to be the thing that I love the most. I still, at my core, am a writer.

That’s what I love, and that’s probably what I naturally do the most. But growing as a performer and sharing the moment with people has become my favorite thing to do. “One Black Sheep” is available for instant download with all pre-orders for JUST KIDS starting tomorrow. ‘JUST KIDS’ is set for release on Feb. 24 via Republic Records.